startup hustle

Last week I calculated the return on investment (ROI) of a large CPC campaign over multiple engines for a startup I am currently working on. I realized that I dont check the ROI often enough, and none of my colleagues at other startups seem to either. When your startup is profitable and you have been using the same marketing mediums over a course of half a year, you might get a little “lazy” on optimizing your marketing through ROI.

I work on multiple startups and with many internet marketers that handle the daily tasks at these young companies. As I learn new tactics and methods I try to pass them on. Unfortunately, the common tasks that should be completed on more of a monthly or quarterly basis slip through the cracks.

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Rand wrote a good post over at SEOmoz about startups lack of using (or understanding) SEO. I saw a list of blog post that provided startup marketing advice and I was hoping to see a post from Startup Hustle (because I wanted a link from Rand), but I do talk about SEO so I did not meet the requirement. Rands overall point was that SEO is basically free and a little keyword research goes a long way.

Let me just be clear on this point – not one of those posts has the word “SEO” in it, nor makes any clear reference to getting traffic from search engines. I’m forced to ask myself – are these people idiots? Are they being coy? Or have they really never experienced the built-in marketing channel that comes from ranking at the top of the engines for a relevant keyword phrase?

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Andrew Hyde has added some more t-shirts, this time for startups at Venture Capital Wear. I have added my three favorite below. The twitter overload could not be any more spot on. I wish everyone would just stick with updating there lives on myspace, facebook, their blogs, on instant messenger and tumblr. I mean, do we really need twitter updates as well?

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A trend I am starting to see among young internet entrepreneurs as well as more established startups is a lack of understanding how customers use the internet to research and buy. This information is more basic than understanding your target customers, it is common consumer processes.

There are many reports written on how consumers use the internet to buy products and services. Its not new information, but hardly any of us (us = startups and entrepreneurs) use that knowledge to our benefit. I recently sat in a meeting with a colleague to help weed issues in his startup marketing plan. Before the meeting, someone was mentioning the new purchases they had made on the internet. The amount of research this individual conducted was what you would expect from a twenty-something that is internet savvy. This startup didn’t build a product under the assumption that their customers would do the same product research. They did not do it on purpose, they just didn’t put themselves in the consumers shoes.

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There are a few tools that claim they can report the cost of a keyword in the search engines. I can tell you with confidence and experience that none of those tools work. This is the case with both Google and Yahoo.

There are sites like spyfu.com (subscription based) that can tell you the cost and words your competitors use, which it does neither well. Google Adwords has a tool called the “Traffic Estimator“. The tool has you input a keyword, the CPC bid and the area which you will target (geo-targeting). The resulting report will show you the estimated clicks per day, estimated position and estimated cost per click. The report was very accurate with the estimated position and estimated clicks per day. One area that the Estimator was not even close was the estimated cost per click…oops. It was actually off $1.00 per click for certain keywords. A buck per click can add up fast, so that tool has been deemed useless.

There is only one true way to figure out the cost per click for keywords. Open an account and bid on the keywords. Take $25.00, pick a few keywords to test and set the bids at $0.50. Try to get on the first page so you can see the number of impressions (searches) for that keyword, and get a rough estimate on the price. The $25 – $100 you spend on testing keywords in the search engine will answer more questions than any of those sites that “report” CPC cost.

One of my favorite sites for startup news just hit TechCrunch…which sucks. When you find a really good site like YC News that is a Digg-like setup, the last thing you need is the negative readers of TechCrunch swamping the site. The site has been slow since the horrible article.

Of course the TechCrunch article will not kill YC News, that was just me being dramatic. It might render it near useless for those that knew YC News pre-TechCruch. What I would really like to know is why would Arrington post that article? He has to know what will be unleashed when the TechCrunch groupies get their hands on it. I would assume if Arrington really used YC News as a source of information he would keep it to himself (and by “keep it to himself” I mean not write an article about it).

Would there be any reason that Arrington would do this on purpose, knowing what he would unleash on the YC News board?

AlphaLab in Pittsburgh has now joined yCombinator and TechStars as a startup launch program. AlphaLab’s deal is a bit more enticing since you receive $25,000 for only 3% equity in the company. TechStars takes 5% equity in your company for $15,000 and yCombinator gives you $15,000 for about 6% if you have 2 founders.

From a pure money standpoint AlphaLab has the best deal. Your startup will also receive services, advisors and office space in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The location is probably the biggest drawback.

The deadline for the Summer/Fall program is March 31st.

I started to read about a pagerank update on some of the marketing/SEO forums but saw no movement on any of the sites I watch. About a week later I noticed two sites change PR (one went up, the other went down). When I first started internet marketing pagerank updates were consistent, about once per quarter. In the past 6 months PR updates are becoming more common outside the usual standard updates. There is always debate about when these smaller updates occur because not everyone is being effected. I just wanted to verify that I have seen multiple pagerank changes this week.

Startups often want to use viral marketing (aka word of mouth) because it is free, the public does most of the work for you and people are more likely to use a product recommended by a friend. My experiences with viral marketing often involves a startup asking me to turn on viral marketing like a light switch. The problem is viral marketing is not like pay per click, there is no “on” button. Viral marketing is closer to search engine optimization (SEO) because it involves multiple factors that have to be in unison.

The major lapse in viral marketing is the product was most likely not built for a viral audience. Viral marketing and word of mouth are just buzz. Business to business products are not generally viral. I’m not saying they can’t be, I’m just saying they are not by nature. Electronics on the other hand have a much better chance of producing viral growth.

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